Spirit Junkie creator Gabrielle Bernstein on how to be judgment-free in 2018

Wellness expert and author Gabrielle Bernstein shares her tips for being more mindful in the new year. (Photo: Getty Images)

With each new year comes the perfect opportunity to become a new or better you, and for wellness expert and best-selling author Gabrielle Bernstein, that means going judgment-free — ridding yourself of old habits or old friends connected to negative energy.

Leading up to the Jan. 2 release of her sixth book, titled Judgment Detox, the woman behind the Spirit Junkie app talks about the aspect of your life that is most likely keeping you from reaching your full potential. But to avoid daunting thoughts about constructing a completely new mindset, she encourages people to keep new routines simple in order to reap the biggest benefit in the long run.

The choice to become more mindful in the new year, Bernstein tells Yahoo Lifestyle, is yours, and her expertise is here to help you ease into a journey of betterment.

Yahoo Lifestyle: What are some steps people can take to become more mindful in the new year?

Gabrielle Bernstein: I think the first step is to really want it. If you want to create any kind of positive change in your life, it has to come from your desire to change. So, that’s step one, just wanting it. When people want to change, they have a desire, but they don’t necessarily know how. The book offers you the how, which is such an empowering thing. The second step is just to keep it simple. To do something small each day to get closer to consciousness, to get closer to that awareness that you want to create. So if that means learning a meditation practice and applying it once a day, for five minutes a day, that repetition of that behavior will be what creates the change.

How will your book Judgment Detox help readers to kick-start their year?

Throughout the book, I write about how judgment is one of the more pervasive issues that we all have that’s keeping us from really attracting what we want in our life. And a new year is a time when we really want to focus on being better, attracting more, creating more of what we want. So the intention of this book at that time would be to really get the reader into a mindset where they’re starting to clear away the pattern of judgment so they can actually begin to attract more of what they want in the new year.

We’re living in times where there’s never been more division than now. People are voicing their beliefs of separation more, probably, than ever. These times that we’re living in require us to have tools and to have a place to get centered and have practices for turning inward. Otherwise, we’re gonna go mad, literally. With all of the media and all of the pressures of the times, we have to have a spiritual foundation in order to survive. It’s truly what I believe.

How would you respond to those who say they’re too busy to get involved with mindfulness or meditation now?

The experiences of the world that we have are the choices that we make. So we can choose to feel so overwhelmed that we can’t make change, or we can choose to take what overwhelms and use it as a catalyst for change. I always say that your happiness is a choice you make. So really tapping into the understanding that it’s up to you to create that change.

What’s one change you’ve been meaning to make in your own life?

Making my peace and well-being my highest priority. So really practicing what I preach, disengaging in gossip and conversations that lower my energy. Changing my friends, changing friend groups if I have to. Really just committing to the practices that I preach and making them the highest priority. My well-being and my happiness is much more important to me than how much I can achieve.